4.15.2009

The figure cannot be repeated too often. Remember, when a candidate next solicits your vote, that four out of every five laws are proposed in Brussels by bureaucrats whom we did not choose and cannot dismiss. Voting is becoming a decorative, almost folkloric activity. Power has shifted from elected representatives to unelected officials.

The statistic, by the way, comes courtesy of the German Federal Justice Ministry, which did a comprehensive survey of all the legal acts adopted in Germany since 1998, and found that 85 per cent of them were there to give force to EU directives or regulations. In some of the accession countries the proportion might be even higher. There is no reason to believe that it would be lower in Britain but, if ministers think differently, let them produce their own figures. Until now, they have flintily refused to come up with an estimate. I think we can guess why.